Review of Junk Art

Blurb from the publisher: 'Discover a new art style with over 10 ways to play with unique pieces! Your goal: getting the most fans!

Create structures with unique pieces! Force your opponent to choose; Will your structure be the most impressive?'

What you get: Your USD 70 will buy you Junk Art, a premium dexterity stacking game made exclusively from wood that can accommodate from two to six players and lasts around 30 minutes. The game comes in a sturdy, luxurious wooden box inside a cardboard insert. If all that is reminiscent of something already, it's because the company behind it is Pretzel Games, a company that has already proved its worth in luxurious wooden dexterity games through the Flick 'em Up! line.

In addition to the 12-page rulebook (in English, French, German and Dutch) that can be found on the publishers' website free of charge, the game also contains the following: 6 wooden bases, 60 fan tokens, 60 wooden Junk pieces (15 pieces per colour), 60 Junk Art cards (one per piece), 15 City cards (including 3 blank cards to create your own), one Start player/Direction of play card, one Special Star card, one tape measure (85 cm / 33 inches), and 3 Cactus cards (for the Nashville game only).

Gameplay: Junk Art is a stacking dexterity game, where the players try to gather fans (points), through fulfilling different goals by exposing art (their construction through the use of the wooden Junk pieces) in different cities (turns). The game can be played in any number of turns, with three being a minimum. A set of universal rules applies to placement.

To start with, the pieces are not exactly platonic solids, at least the vast majority of them. Second, they don't exactly fit well; there is something that gives way, something that is loose, something that is inclined and so on and so forth. A piece can be placed either on a player's base or on another piece that is on the base or a piece that is on a piece on the base and so on and so forth. Both hands can be used when playing an active piece, and one hand can be used to hold the base. Nobody is allowed to touch or move the table when a player plays, and even more so, their opponents' construction. The active piece can be used to move or adjust already placed items. Any item however that falls and touches the table is set aside and counts as a negative.

Each city has its own rules about what to achieve and how it is counted. There are eleven plus one cities, the plus one being Nashville. Nashville is exceptional in that one also needs Flick 'em Up! to play and incorporates rules (flicking against opponents!) and scenery from that game, namely the cactuses. The remaining eleven cities however work in a more straightforward way. Most of them have the tallest structure as a goal, while other have the most placed pieces, be the last man standing in a common sculpture, or simply be the last man standing with your own sculpture. When that goal is achieved also varies from city to city. In some the game ends when all the cards are played, in others when one player has two or more fallen pieces, while in others when a player gets eliminated. Each city also has its own way of handling a turn. An example (in a four player game in Gujarat) involves each player drawing the same piece at the same time, meaning that everybody faces the same difficulty. In other cities however players draw cards and give to those adjacent to them the cards they do not wish, keeping the easiest pieces for themselves. Cities also award fans differently. In Pisa for example everybody that wasn't eliminated gains 3 fans, while in Tokyo the three tallest structures end 5, 3 and 1 points respectively.

The strong points: I was kind of skeptical that Junk Art could have imitated the rules of Flick 'em Up! and I am very happy to be proven totally wrong. This is not a flicking game; it is a placement and stacking game of quaint, or not so quaint, wooden objects. There's the thin elongated cylinder, this bizarre contraption that looks like miniature weight-lifting weights, a door-like shape, a pot and what have you. Theme-wise, it makes perfect sense. All these shapes appear to be almost usual, but have a small twist that usually doesn't do anything. A rectangle that has a hole; something that looks like a skateboard platform; a doughnut. If somebody told me that this was really modern art, I would have believed him, so full points for theming.

The reason Junk Art is entertaining however is not just the quaintly carved pieces of wood. It is the gameplay, for an unassuming game that is composed of numerous mini-games. Were it not made that way, the game would have been ludicrously repetitive. Seeing however how each city has a slightly different set of rules to play with, each round is different. Having the opportunity of either choosing yourself which cities to play or allowing lady luck to pick for you is very good game design for a game as ultimately simple as this. Depending on your style, you might like some cities more than others. Gujarat is about fairness; everybody does the same with the exact same piece at the exact same time, but it can only be played by four players maximum. Home Town is about matching colours while giving your opponents' bad hand that might return to you. Monaco aspires to be a speed-building game with the goal of setting up your ten-item structure the fastest possible. All in all, the cities are so diverse that the game does not become boring.

Quality wise, what can I say? This is Pretzel Games, and it is all wood. The box, once again, could have easily been a workman's tool box of yore; it is that sturdy and that practical with its wooden dividers. Every piece is wooden, abstract and modern, in line with the theme of the game. The colours are funky, bright and ill-fitting at the same time (orange, green, petrol and gray).

As much as you will not need an enormous table for this, make sure that it is a flat table. As in, fully flat.

The weak points: This is a dexterity game. No matter how gorgeous, themed, luxuriously-produced it is, it remains an extremely simple game. In fact, were one malevolent, he could say that it is an overproduced toy that tries to become a game. I personally would not agree, the bottom line however remains: many gamers will find this game woefully expensive for what it does.

The linking of this game and Flick 'em Up! felt artificial tin the Nashville city. It's not just the cactuses not really fitting with the theme of Junk Art; the flicking is sort of out of place too. Seeing how precarious all these structures are, hitting one means destruction; the problem of course is hitting it in the first place, something not that obvious. I appreciate the idea of providing a small bonus to those that bought both games, but I am not fully convinced about the implementation. I don't know what I would have designed myself here to blend the two though, to be honest, so I am not holding this against the designers.

Conclusion: Junk Art is an entertaining dexterity game with whimsical shapes and elements, innovative turns and extremely high production values. It might not be for everybody, but it does what it sets to flawlessly and stylishly. I have to try the oversized edition myself; it might actually be easier.

For more info on Junk Art and Pretzel Games, visit its website at http://www.pretzelgames.com.

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